Malcolm Owen
Another rumor has arrived that says the iPhone 16 family will all use the same A18 chip, casting aside the last few years of processor tiers for Pro and non-Pro phones.
On Monday, a report claimed that the A18 would be in use across all models, in a shake-up of Apple's chips used in its iPhones. If a new report is to be believed, it could be a bigger shift than first thought.
Identifiers
Discovered by Nicolas Alvarez and reported by MacRumors on Tuesday, back-end code has revealed that four devices will form the iPhone roster for this fall. However, there were five identifiers observed in the code.
The list starts with iPhone17,1 and progresses up to iPhone17,5 sequentially. While there are five identifiers, it is thought the fifth will be for another device, possibly a future iPhone SE update.
Apple has a tendency to link the identifier to the chip being used, rather than to the iPhone generation. The iPhone 15 and Plus, which uses the A16 Bionic, have identifiers iPhone15,4 and iPhone15,5.
However, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, which use the A17 Bionic, have identifiers iPhone16,1 and iPhone16,2.
If all iPhones used the same number of identifier, namely in the 17-series, this therefore means all will be using the same generation of chip. That would mean the A18.
Two chip possibilities
With all models on the same generation, it is thought that Apple could still introduce a variation in performance between the Pro and non-Pro models. This could be as simple as disabling or binning GPU cores and using those chips on the non-Pro devices.
Monday's report also offered another possibility that could allow the naming. It proposed that the usual hand-me-down chip strategy would be modified for the iPhone 16, with the A17's design simply being put through a new process at TSMC and renamed the A18.
Meanwhile, a new A18 Pro design with improved graphics and AI computing elements would be introduced for the Pro models.
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7 Comments
This is compatible with the other report saying there will be an A18 and an A18 Pro — just look at, for example, the current MacBook Pro identifiers, all start with 15, regardless of whether they have M3, M3 Pro, or M3 Max…
So all iPhone 16 identifiers will start with 17, because all will have variants of A18. This lines up with the other report.
The vast majority of iPhone generations have used the same SOC across all models in the generation. I suspect the recent aberrations may have been due to TSMC constraints. The timing/yields/costs of N3E might allow apple to return to a single SOC across the lineup.
But next year we might see a split again if N2 is available, but not ready to support the full lineup.
Com'on iPhone mini Pro!
I saw an article recently that says “Apple intelligence” will only work on the upcoming 16 models. Ever notice how often you have to have the latest hardware to run things in the Apple ecosystem. Is it intentional to increase sales? Anyway, I just bought the 15 a month ago with 512gb storage and want to get 5 years out of it. So no, I’m not spending more time and money to get a 16. The 15 is great.